Through May 5 at the Cooper Gallery, “Diago: The Pasts of This Afro-Cuban Present” confronts the Cuban racial narrative, rewriting history to include the slavery and shame the country has tried to forget. This is artist Juan Roberto Diago’s first retrospective, and first exhibit in the United States. Curated by Alejandro de la Fuente, director of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at the Hutchins Center, the show is on display at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art.

Slavery is in Cuba’s past, but, as in the United States, its legacy continues. That is the ongoing career theme of mixed-media artist Juan Roberto Diago, who will exhibit 25 pieces in “Diago: The Pasts of This Afro-Cuban Present,” a career retrospective at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art.

This exhibition includes 25 artworks of mixed media and installation art that span Diago’s vibrant career, since the mid-1990s, when he began to construct a revisionist history of the Cuban nation from the experience of a person of African descent. It is a history of enslavement and cultural loss, but also of resilience and recovery, the kind of history that is required in this Afro-Cuban present.

The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art at Harvard University presents the exhibition ‘Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present’, curated by Harvard University professor Alejandro de la Fuente. The show opens to the public on February 1 and runs until May 5, 2017. This exhibition includes 25 artworks of mixed media and installation art that span Juan Roberto Diago’s vibrant career, since the mid-1990s, when he began to construct a revisionist history of the Cuban nation from the experience of a person of African descent. It is a history of enslavement and cultural... Read more about ARC Magazine: 'Harvard University presents ‘Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present’'

Juan Roberto Diago is a leading member of the new Afro-Cuban cultural movement, which has valiantly denounced the persistence of racism and discrimination in Cuban society. This exhibition of twenty-five mixed-media and installation artworks trace Diago’s vibrant career from the mid-1990s, when he began to construct a revisionist history of the Cuban nation from the experience of a person of African descent. It is a history of enslavement and cultural loss, but also of resilience and recovery, the kind of history that is required in this Afro-Cuban present.

Curated by Alejandro de la Fuente, Diago: The Past of This Afro-Cuban Present at The Cooper Gallery presents Juan Roberto Diago Durruthy’s first retrospective. Diago’s work is expository; a knowledge producer, Diago reconstructs a new history of the Afro-Cuban cultural movement. In so doing, Diago’s work exposes the history of oppression from the perspective of both oppressed and oppressor, forcing acknowledgment and revision of subjugation.

El curador Alejandro de La Fuente y el artista plástico Juan Roberto Diago han logrado un acontecimiento sin precedentes: presentar en los predios de la Universidad de Harvard la muestra «Diago: Los pasados de este presente afrocubano», una retrospectiva de la obra del artista. Diago es el primer cubano en tener una exposición indiviual en dicho recinto.

After it appeared in the Cooper Gallery’s 2015 group exhibition Drapetomanía, Juan Roberto Diago saw his mixed-media piece Yo soy monte (I Am the Mountain) enter the Museum of Fine Arts’ permanent collection. A few years later, the 45-year-old Cuban artist now finds himself back at the Cooper Gallery—only this time as the subject of his first major retrospective. Curator Alejandro de la Fuente scours his two-decade-plus career, in which he’s examined Cuba’s African diaspora and tackled political and social issues.

Diago: Los pasados de este presente afrocubano es la primera mirada seria y sistemática de Estados Unidos al artista contemporáneo más destacado de Cuba, Juan Roberto Diago, y su prolífico trabajo. Diago es miembro destacado del nuevo movimiento cultural afrocubano, que ha denunciado la persistencia del racismo y la discriminación en la sociedad cubana. En esta exposición de 25 obras multimedia e instalaciones, se abarca la dinámica carrera de Diago desde mediados de la década de 1990, cuando comenzó a construir una historia revisionista de la nación cubana a partir de la experiencia de una... Read more about El Planeta: 'Exposición de arte contra el racismo y la discriminación'

La galería Ethelbert Cooper de Arte Africano y Afroamericano, espacio expositivo de la prestigiosa universidad de Harvard, acoge, por primera vez en su historia, la muestra personal de un artista cubano, Juan Roberto Diago, quien expone 25 obras realizadas en técnicas mixtas e instalaciones y que abarca con una mirada retrospectiva más de veinte años de una fructífera carrera artística.